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Wednesday, January 30, 2013

DIY Portal 2 Lemon Grenade

To those completely lost right now: yes, it's another Portal thing. Click here for the game tirade that (kind of) explains it.

This is one of my longest delayed tutorials, since I actually made my first grenade nearly three months ago, just after Halloween. The hold-up was finding the proper display, which I had to order, and then re-order, and then get a plaque for, and then re-order another plaque, and now FINALLY I get to share it with you guys!

Now, you might be tempted to think I just stuck a plastic grenade top on a fake lemon - and you would be *almost* correct. In fact, my lemon has a fun special feature. Observe:

This mod is actually quite simple, and shouldn't cost you more than $10 in materials. (Not including the display case.) Keep reading to see how!

First, you're going to need a toy grenade. I found mine at the Spirit Halloween store last Halloween for $2.99:

Since Halloween is long over, try looking online or at local costume shops. You want the kind that has a soundboard with the fun "tick-tick-tick-BOOM" feature.

Your other key ingredient is the fake lemon. Wal-Mart has the best fake lemons I've ever seen; they're weighted in the middle and textured so realistically I half expected juice to squirt out when I started cutting.

I believe these cost $1.99 each.

Disassemble the grenade by removing all the tiny screws (but don't lose them!), and slide out the switch mechanism and small speaker:

You're going to be tucking the battery compartment inside your lemon, so you want to get it as small as possible. For mine, that meant snipping off the plastic side pieces, giving me this tiny battery box:

Using a slim utility blade, start cutting a square hole into the top of your lemon, pausing every now and then to check the fit:

The inside of the lemon is made of Styrofoam, so after you slice through the thick skin you might want to switch to needle-nosed pliers to pull the crumbly foam pieces out, as opposed to trying to slice them your blade.

Keep checking the fit for your battery box; you want it to slide in perfectly, like so:

There's a concrete weight in the center of these lemons, so your blade might hit it as you're cutting down. Fortunately I found there was still enough room for the battery box to fit, though.

Ok, now on to the grenade top:

Snip off the top of the grenade with pliers. I did one side at a time, and found the plastic was easily bent and snipped. Try to keep those prong bits all the same length, if you can. Use a metal file to smooth out the sharp corners and any jagged edges.

My grenade was Army Green, so next I taped off the gunmetal sections and spray-painted the rest matte black, including the grenade handle:

After painting:

(This is before I removed the painter's tape; the inside areas on the head are still gunmetal gray.)

Now comes the tricky part: putting it all together.

Insert the battery box inside your lemon, and then use a sliver of tape to secure the excess wires to the underside of the grenade speaker. This speaker is going to sit on top of the lemon, directly over your battery box, and it will be held in place by the grenade topper.

So what holds the plastic grenade topper in place? Pins, like these:

You'll need to drill tiny holes in the "prongs" of your grenade head for the pins to fit through. Enter your trusty Dremel:

Here John's drilling the first hole, but I later took over and can assure you: it's not hard. The plastic is easy to punch through, so the only tricky part is making sure you angle your drill bit so the pins will be guided down into the lemon at a roughly 45 degree angle.

To show you how this is all going to fit together, here I'm holding one half of the grenade topper in place, with the speaker and wires tucked underneath:

Put your grenade topper together before attaching it to your lemon, though; this picture is only to give you an idea of the fit. You'll also need to re-insert the switch back inside the handle - don't forget, or your lemon grenade won't go boom!

I don't have a process pic for this next step, because it took too many hands for me to spare one for a photo, but it's just a matter of holding the grenade topper in place, wires and speaker nicely tucked underneath, and inserting the pins through the topper's prongs into the lemon. (Get a second person to help you.) Because the pins will all be inserted at an angle, there's no way the top can be pulled off without removing them. Trust me, I carry my grenade around by the head all the time; it's very secure.

Oh, and my pins were a little too long - they kept hitting the concrete center of the lemon - so I had John snip off the ends a bit. You may need to do the same.

Once you've got the grenade top secured to the lemon, it's time to DECORATE. (Woot!)

I printed the Aperture logo on plain paper, and then used a craft knife to cut it out for a stencil.

Using a stencil on a bumpy rounded lemon isn't the easiest thing to do, but it WAS easier than I expected. I used an adhesive putty to stick the paper down on 2 sides, and then held each panel down with my fingers as a pounced acrylic paint on with a stiff brush.

As with all stencils, be sure to only pounce straight up and down, and watch your fingers: they'll get paint on them, so you don't want that getting smeared on the lemon.

Tada! I also found and printed the little yellow Flammable symbol, which I laminated with packing tape and then glued in place on the top.

I wasn't happy with the plastic pin that came with the toy grenade, so I replaced it with a stainless steel cotter pin (find them at the hardware store for cheap) and a keychain ring. That's completely optional, though.

The display is made to hold a softball (I found it on ebay for just under $20 with shipping), and I got the idea from this lemon grenade, which has a soundboard installed in the display base instead of the lemon. That one has the grenade displayed horizontally, though, which I just couldn't get to look right for mine. There's a hole in the base, so to fit the plexiglass top on you have to twist the grenade at a slight angle. After weeks of fooling around with trying to modify the base I had a EUREKA moment and realized I could just display the lemon vertically. Problem solved!

I thought an official sounding plaque would be a fun touch, so we ordered this one from our local trophy shop for about $8. The patent number actually DOES have significance: it's an obscure number found in Portal 2 - and if you already knew that, you get about 267 million geek points. (Can't stand the mystery? Then look for it here in the game's ending credits.)

So that's my lemon grenade!

I hope you guys enjoyed the tutorial, because now here's the best part: I made two lemon grenades, just so I could give one away here on the blog!

The give-away has ended, and the winner is Elizabeth of The Elizabeth Archive! Congrats, Elizabeth, and please e-mail me your mailing address!

Some caveats: you don't get your own display case (those things are expensive!), and the grenade I'm giving away does have an imperfection, which you can see in this photo: see the slight gap between the topper and the lemon? The battery compartment and speaker were either a little higher, or the lemon is a little bumpier on top, but for whatever reason I just couldn't quite get those prongs to sit flush. You can only see the gap from this angle, though; overhead and from the side looks fine.The only other difference is that the give-away grenade doesn't have the
Flammable stickers, since I wasn't sure you guys would want them. Other than that it's identical, and would look suitably impressive on any gamer's bookcase or fruit bowl. :DAs always, I'll ship anywhere, so just leave a comment to enter the give-away. I do ask that you only enter for yourself, though - none of this "I have a friend who would love this!" stuff. I'm not trying to be a Scrooge; I just really want this to go to one of you readers. It feels more like a gift to a friend that way, you know?

Ok, I think that's everything! I'll choose a winner at random sometime next week, so be watching for that announcement here and on the Epbot Facebook page.Happy commenting, everyone!

This. Is. AWESOME. I immediately starred this so I could make it myself. The further and further I read, the more chances for me to mess it up appeared... I started to feel a little defeated. I would never own my very own :( But then - a giveaway! It's meant to be!!

Eee!! This is why I love you, in a purely platonic, love-for-someone-you've-never-met, kind of way. You are ten shades of awesome, and I would love to own anything you've made, this included. 'Cause hey, when life gives you plastic lemons, you make cool grenades..Nikki T

My husband and I evacuated our home from Hurricane Ike to crash with my brother in his dorm room. My brother had an x-box with an exciting new game that we'd never heard of. We played Portal straight through that night while my brother, an RA, went to deal with resident drama and drinking. Seriously, we stayed up SUPER LATE! And so our love of Portal began. I own an aperature shirt and made a Cake for my 30th birthday cake. Portal 2 was so much wackier...(So, random number generator, pick me.)

Does it count if my son wants one? He's too young to comment, but he was literally asking me to look up lemon-grenade tutorials on YouTube just yesterday! So, I'm cheating a bit and asking on his behalf (though it will be in MY house!)

“When life gives you lemons, don’t make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don’t want your damn lemons, what the hell am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life’s manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I’m the man who’s gonna burn your house down! With the lemons! I’m gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!"

My husbands very first cosplay was Cave Johnson; unfortunately somebody this weekend ripped the retractable cord right out of his official Valve lemon. I'd love to win to replace it for him; I'm so proud of him taking his first tentative steps into cosplaying with me!

Oh my goodness, that is so nifty!! I was JUST playing Portal 2 a few minutes ago and then decided to check your blog. Also my boyfriend and I beat Portal 2 co-op last week, so this would be a nice trophy of sorts.

The best thing about giveaways on epbot is that not only are you getting an awesome geeky handcrafted item, you're getting something MADE by JEN! (cue "friends" looking at you like you're mad and asking who this Jen person is).

Awesome! The Portal series is an absolute favorite of mine. Portal was the 1st game my husband & I completed together (he navigated & we coop puzzle solved on 1 & did 2 player on 2) -- you'd think there would be more after 20 years of marriage, wouldn't you? LOL! So many fond memories! It would indeed look awesome on our mantle (if I win). And yes, the cake is still a lie!

Um, yes please! I would love this and it would probably also be the only thing of mine that the other half would actually let me display when company visits. PLUS. . . I could totally use it in an Edgar Portal-themed photo shoot, which, I'm still trying to figure out how to turn him into a companion cube.

These are so awesome!!Portal was/is one of my all-time favorite games (I don't like just killing people randomly, I like games with a point or a quest of some sort c:) and to have a grenade lemon would be fabulous!

OMG this is so cool! My husband pre-ordered the Orange Box way back when so we have a long history with Portal.

One of these would be a nice addition to our little valve collection. (MEDIC!) Or I might let him take to work and it can go next to his bag of Cheezy Poofs and Mr. Bump. I'm sure the other docs would think it's totally normal to have a lemon grenade in you office.

To repeat the comment I left on you FB page, "This is the awesomest thing I've seen on the interweb in in quite sometime." This would look great on my bookshelf next to my Portal bookends. Give it to me . . . because . . . you can . . .

Fantastic! If I don't win it, I'll definitely DIMyself! Oooh, maybe age it with your aging tutorial... and add a little rust to the handle... Dare I say, glue a few gears on it?! Steampunk Lemon Grenade!!! You are so bad for my wallet, madame!

I must register my complete and utter objections to the state of my personal happiness for which I find you completely responsible for, as of now. Well,ok Now. I had previously been able to avoid the time supension/reality twisting/fun objectification sort of thing you ascribe in your "web-log", however you now make it absolutely unavoidable to confine my explorations of digitally drawn worlds and mysterious adventures to the small screen I conceal in my handbag. Oh you wicked wicked gaming succubus, you! I was lured into the Portal Universe by the dulcet tones of the unseen voice in the videographic display! I hope you know I am so old I remember waiting those precious minutes as the operating system loaded... click click zzzzrrrkkcc pop!, then the diskette was delicately inserted...faint music would play and the fantastic gray image in the tiny box awaiting my command... "walk north". I had reclaimed my life, now I am doomed.... sob.

I have been working on the lemon quote cross stitch for months, I am not a very good crafter. Right now I have some portal quotes on the fridge, and this lemon would look great in our house, maybe next to my XFiles Barbies.

Eeeee that's awesome! It would go well with my mighty ape banana. It took a lot of convincing to let my brother borrow the orange box and portal 2, AND HE STILL HASN'T RETURNED IT. Hurumph. Awesome lemon grenade though :-)

This is the most brilliant use of fake fruit I've ever seen. I love anything Portal and would love to be able to display something as awesome as this in the middle of my geek-filled living room. As a long-time reader of Epbot it would be so special to have something you made. I hope I'm the lucky winner!

This is the first time I've ever commented, but because I want this so badly it's worth it! I love your blog(s) so much! Just yesterday I was proud to be the (unfortunately only) girl to lead my lab group in a rousing chorus of "Still Alive," and I largely have you to thank!

The second I saw this I though "with all the lemons I've been handed recently, I need one of these!" When I read through to the end I saw I could get one and I squeed. Loudly. And scared the dog. Oops.

My daughter is a huge fan of Portal, but she doesn't read your blog (despite my attempts, or perhaps because of my attempts. I can't get her to read books that I recommend either). And her birthday was last Thursday.

It's an awesome lemon grenade, though, Jen! Give it to someone who reads the links their mother sends them. :)